I am tired of the flash stuff as much as anyone. But this person didn't just say something like "OMG where is Flash?" Or "OMG I can't get to most of the Internet--I just found this out!" or "WTF is wrong with Apple, there is NO FLASH in my iPad????"

He just wanted to know how we all feel about the lack of Flash. Sure there are other threads, but most start out differently.... at least the ones I usually see.

So I will say, as for me, I don't miss flash really. I have plenty of video options. And the flash games I play on fb... well I'm probably better off without them. But I don't have to be: I can use Splashtop Remote to run it on my Mac or PC (my preferred method). For running it right on my iPad there are several apps that can do that... some do it surprisingly well. But I rarely need it.

One other point, that I think makes this issue worse on the iPad Vs the iPhone or iPod touch: when the iPhone came out there was a huge rush, or perhaps push, to create mobile versions of Websites that were iPhone-friendly.

That really hasn't happened with the iPad. So if you come across, say, a car company site that requires flash you would be stopped and unable to do anything really. But on the iPhone you would see a version of the site that, while likely not as robust as the full site, is at least usable. So I make sure I have a browser on my iPad (Atomic web and iCab) that lets me change the browser ID to the iPhone, easily. Several times that has allowed me to at least use a site that was unusable in Safari on the iPad. I could stomp up and down and say I am NOT going to look at an iPhone-formatted site on my iPad--or I can just get what I need from the site and be done with it.

Yes, I miss flash in a big way. I like to listen to baseball games over the internet and my local AM station website uses flash for the audio. I also like to watch the interactive Gametracker to follow the game and that is flash too. I am currently using swifter browser which will make those work on the iPad but can run funky. Sure wish there was native support.

I'll try to answer your question without insult. The topic has been done to death but as a new iPad owner myself I can say you can browse without the need for flash most of the time. This however depends on the sites you visit, if you play a lot of browser based games and the like then you'll run into problems using Safari alone. There are optional browsers that handle flash, but I dislike them as they seem sluggish in operation, granted I haven't tried all.

In general, day to day browsing with Safari hasn't hindered me much, but your experience may differ, depending on the sites you tend to visit, for instance flash based videos and the likes will not play, this can be annoying if you're visiting a site which uses videos for instructional purposes.

At the end of the day there's no real answer other than to try using one beforehand.

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